The Next Great Adventure
by Anne McSommers
Summary: While Harry had moved on from the losses he had suffered, there was one life whose "disappearance" for want of a better word, still haunted him, even 100 years after it happened. (Warning: Un-Beta'd)


Author's Note: General Disclaimers apply, not mine. Also looking for a beta to return an edited version to me.

There was no one that could say that Harry Potter had not lived a full life. He had married Ginny Weasley, had raised 3 wonderful children and was always there for his godson Teddy Lupin. He was an Auror, head Auror, he retired, wrote a book on defense against the dark arts, taught defense against the dark arts for years on end, and retired a second time, only to write more books.

Though his childhood wasn't a happy one, and his teen years a mess of strife, war, and loss, Harry Potter for all accounts seemed to have accepted it all and moved on to live happily ever after, as every hero should get a chance to do. Seemed, however, was a well chosen word to describe Harry's acceptance though.

While Harry had moved on from the losses he had suffered, there was one life whose "disappearance" for want of a better word, still haunted him, even 100 years after it happened. It was not that of the monster whose life he took, or anything so mundane. It wasn't even the death of the faceless innocents lost in the war, for even harry wasn't that good of a person. It wasn't Severus Snape, though Harry was upset he never got a chance to truly know the man. It wasn't even Dumbledore, whose machinations drove the first 18 years of his life.

It was the so called death of his own godfather Sirius Black. Hermione had some psychobabble about the loss of the only father figure he had ever knew, but even that wasn't really what kept Harry from moving on. It was the manner in which Sirius Black had "died". It was the fact that strictly speaking, Sirius Back, hadn't actually died at all.

Sirius Black had been hit with a stunner and fallen into the veil. Even as Remus had stopped Harry from following Sirius beyond the veil, he lacked an understanding of how Sirius could just be gone. That, however, was that for the time being. There was a war on, bigger things to keep stock of at the moment, and Harry was forced to try and accept that Sirius Black, had in fact died. When it came down to it though, deep down Harry never really believed that Sirius could just be dead, from being pushed behind a curtain, no matter how ethereal it may appear.

So Harry pushed it aside and fought a war. After the war Harry didn't have time to look into the issue either, there were funerals to plans, corruption to uncover, trials to plan, and rogue death eaters on the loose. Then there was rebuilding, and NEWTS, and then for Harry a girlfriend turned fiancée and a wedding to plan.

There was a bit of a lull then, and when Harry was looking to join the Aurors and took the official ministry tour, for the first time in years, he saw it, the veil. And it was like it had happened only yesterday. The unspeakable giving the brief overview of the department of mysteries had answered only a few of Harry's questions , which in reality on brought up more questions, and then had become flustered and shuffled them off to the next stop on the tour.

That night on the way home Harry stopped off at a bookstore and bought the first of what would become a small library devoted to the study of what the ministry called the "veil of death". From then on Harry's life appeared to continue as normal, with all the ups and downs a life usually had. No one else knew about the small warded section of Harry's personal library that was his secret obsession. No one knew that the reason Harry had almost missed his second son's birth was that he was at an auction buying a lot of books from an old family said to be necromancers. No one knew that when Harry went to his study at night he was frantically searching pages for answers to what the veil was, and how it worked. That in all that nice, normal, happy life there was a hidden obsession that took more and more time as the years went by. That was, no one knew until it was far too late to do anything about it.

Exactly 100 years after Sirius Black was lost to the veil, an alarm went off in the department of mysteries. Someone had breached the wards, and was entering the veil chamber. Guards were dispatched, and arrived only in time to witness Harry Potter, step willingly past the veil.

An inquiry was conducted to determine the reason behind Harry Potter's apparent suicide, what could have drive his decision to abandon his wife and extended family, and this is when his lifelong quest was discovered. The wards on his study was broken, and the secret library was revealed, including a book, written by Harry himself outlining his personal findings on the veil. In the end it had come to nothing. For all his examinations and research, all Harry could say in the end is that while people may speculate, no one but those who pass through the veil can truly know what it is capable of. Or as he had stated it "The veil is a question that can only be answered by those who cannot answer". In the end, it was only Harry Potter who had his questions answered, or so it was assumed by those who continued on without him.


End file.
